Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Jun 2012 21:19 UTC
Apple held its keynote speech just now, kicking off its developer conference. The company announced minor refreshes for its laptop line, introduced a stunning new laptop with a Retina display, and gave a sneak peek of iOS 6, which will launch in the Fall.
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Member since:2006-07-04
In Windows 7, an app declares in its manifest whether its "DPI-aware" or not. If so, then W7 doesn't do anything to the app, since the app handles high DPI on its own (and when it's done right, it's very good).
But if an app doesn't declare itself to be DPI aware, then W7 uses XP DPI scaling for DPI between 100% and 125% (where 100% is 96 DPI), then above 125% W7 just does a bitmap scaling, which looks horrible (though its more "accurate" than what XP would do). This is the default behavior, but the user can change that behavior in the DPI Control Panel (that is, the user can change the threshold for XP DPI scaling, and I think a user can choose to always use XP behavior for non-DPI aware apps).
Note: I typed the above from memory; I don't vouch for it to be 100% accurate. 
Windows 8 has a better high-DPI behavior, at least for Metro apps.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.More News »
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Member since:
2006-01-03
I had a corporate Dell D830 with a 1920x1200 resolution, which is about 45% the pixel density this new one. While nice as a bed warmer for arctic conditions (half an hour of arctic conditions, that is), or for weighting down a blimp, it was absolutely unusable without an external LCD. With WinXP, everything was SO small as to immediately be headache inducing. I was SO glad the day it gave up the ghost and it was replaced by something else.
But then, WinXP is laughable at adapting to higher pixel densities. Fonts may be enlarged, but that throws most programs into total disarray.
It is astonishing how different the situation was with Linux. Ubuntu tends to use fonts and widgets that are too large to start with, and it automatically adapts to the actual pixel density, so it really looked gorgeous in that screen. Even icons can be vector images, so they may be drawn at any size. It used to be extremely easy to choose smaller fonts which allowed me to make things exactly the size I liked.
Apple software (unlike desktop Linux or Android) seems dislike different pixel densities or resolutions, and apparently what Apple is only to double-up the size of things, which gives you much smoother fonts in any app and somewhat smoother widgets for updated apps. But the good thing in this distaste for adapting to other densities is that we get a huge 4x jump in resolution in one go.
Anybody knows how does W7 fare with high pixel densities? I guess I soon will, because new hardware is on the way, but I am afraid I won´t be pleased.